Hush Money: West turns blind eye on Qatar’s terrorism funding

Qatar gives Western countries money they desperately need, and in return it gets a blind eye to its actions in the Middle East, even sponsoring ISIS and other jihadists, Danni Makki, researcher specializing on Middle East security, told RT.

The Qatari royal family
is planning to create a residence in the very heart of London,
converting three properties in Regent’s Park into a single
mega-mansion valued at over £200 million. The Al Thani family
already owns some famous London landmarks like the Shard, the
Olympic Park, and Harrods. While Qatar actively buys UK property
and heavily invests in Britain’s economy, the appalling situation
with human rights abuses in Qatar is simply ignored by London. In
fact, Britain also turns a blind eye to Qatar’s links with
extremist groups in the Middle East.

RT:What do you make of the accusations that
Qatar is funding terrorists? They are pretty strong, aren’t
they?

Danni Makki: They are very strong. Qatar is one
of the global funders of terrorism in the entire world. Fair
enough, Qatar has excellent economic relations with the Western
countries but it has a policy of double standards. It maintains a
great relationship with the Western countries and within the
Middle East it fuels bloodshed, violence and lots of conflicts as
we can see now from Libya to Syria, Iraq, Somalia, even the Gaza
Strip. Qatar has a hand in funding terrorism in the Middle East;
there are numerous radical jihadist movements within the Middle
East who get funds from Qatar. And the Qatari government has
turned a blind eye to its own nationals funding these movements
for a number of years now. So in essence we must put the blame
the US which does exempt Qatar from accountability in regard to
this matter.

RT:If all this is well-known, why don’t we
see more outrage over this?

DM: Of course not because the Western
governments at this moment of time have fragile economies, they
are struggling, they are desperate for funds. Qatar gives them
funds. In response the Western governments allow Qatar to act as
it wills in the Middle East and do what they want. There is in
essence a kind of socio-economic agreement. Qatar has very
well-known terrorist funders living within their country. Even
the US Treasury added that Qatari nationals send up to £1.5
million every single month to ISIS fighters. And this is the same
Islamic State which the Western countries are attacking.

RT:Britain is very sensitive to any
terror-related things. ISIS killed its citizens, British soldiers
are helping to root out ISIS in Syria and Iraq…Surely it would
have reacted if these allegations against Qatar were true. What’s
your take on it?

DM: Indeed. Qatari funds are killing Western
journalists as we speak today, and there is, especially in the
Western media, a kind of direction which is saying that Qatar is
a terrorist state. We can get the statements of Sir Malcolm
Rifkind who was a former Foreign Secretary and Defense Secretary.
He stated that Qatar should be sanctioned, and this is very
significant. We can argue today that people are shopping in
Harrods, on a Qatari funded basis they are committing or aiding
terrorism in a sense. It’s quite amazing in a sense, but this is
actually reality on the ground. Qatari nationals have funded
terrorism all across the Arab world. We could argue that groups
like Al-Nusra Front or Ahrar Al-Sham in Syria, these groups who
have been admittedly funded by Qatar, even a mayor of Qatar in
his previous interview stated that “we stopped funding
terrorism, we stopped funding extremism.” Of course Qatar
hasn’t stopped, it has continued funding terrorism. At the same
time Qatar is playing a policy of double standards, it’s almost
lying in a sense to Western nations, attempting to exert its
failed influence in the Arab world. The conflict zones in Iraq
and Syria are very big testaments of that. We can argue that
Sheikh Muhammad al-Arifi, the extremist Arab Sheikh who is banned
from entering London was invited, after he was banned twice, to
Qatar on government-sponsored visits. So Qatar is very complicit
in aiding extremist groups, jihadists groups, and is very
complicit in terrorist activities all across the world.

RT:You argue that Britain needs Qatar for
the money. But why does Qatar need Britain?

DM: Qatar needs Britain first of all because
Britain has a seat in the UN Security Council, because Britain is
a very important country in terms of prestige. Qatar needs strong
Western partners for its investments because it uses the Western
world as a gateway to more economic domination, more economic
hegemony. It feels that it has feasibility to roam around the
Arab world, up to attempting to overthrow governments and create
rebel groups who are Islamic extremists. And the West is
accepting this. Why? Because they need Qatari funds. In France
alone up until the year 2012 Qatar has invested up to £15
billion. In the UK today Qatar invested tens of billions of
pounds. This is very significant for the actual basis of the
Western economy this time and place, especially after the credit
crunch. Qatar invested millions and billions into the Western
economy. So without that you can argue that Western governments
rely more on Qatari funds than Qatar do on Western government’s
political power.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.